Deaf, hard-of-hearing students perform first test of sign language by cell phone

University of Washington engineers are developing the first
device able to transmit American Sign Language over U.S. cellular
networks. The tool is just completing its initial field test by
participants in a UW summer program for deaf and hard-of-hearing
students.

"This is the first study of how deaf people in the United States
use mobile video phones," said project leader Eve Riskin, a UW
professor of electrical engineering.

The MobileASL team has been working to optimize compressed video
signals for sign language. By increasing image quality around the
face and hands, researchers have brought the data rate down to 30
kilobytes per second while still delivering intelligible sign
language. MobileASL also uses motion detection to identify whether
a person is signing or not, in order to extend the phones' battery
life during video use.

Transmitting sign language as efficiently as possible increases
affordability, improves reliability on slower networks and extends
battery life, even on devices that might have the capacity to
deliver higher quality video.

This summer's field test is allowing the team to see how people
use the tool in their daily lives and what obstacles they
encounter. Eleven participants are testing the phones for three
weeks. They meet with the research team for interviews and
occasionally have survey questions pop up after a call is completed
asking about the call quality.

The field test began July 28 and concludes this Wednesday. In
the first two and a half weeks of the study, some 200 calls were
made with an average call duration of a minute and a half,
researchers said. A larger field study will begin this winter.

"We know these phones work in a lab setting, but conditions are
different in people's everyday lives," Riskin said. "The field
study is an important step toward putting this technology into
practice." Participants in the current field test are students in
the UW Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in
Computing. The academy accepts academically gifted deaf and
hard-of-hearing students interested in pursuing computing careers.
Students spend nine weeks at the UW taking computer programming and
animation classes, meeting with deaf and hard-of-hearing role
models who already work in computing fields, UW graduate students
and visiting local computer software and hardware companies.

Most study participants say texting or e-mail is currently their
preferred method for distance communication. Their experiences with
the MobileASL phone are, in general, positive.

"It is good for fast communication," said Tong Song, a Chinese
national who is studying at Gallaudet University in Washington,
D.C. "Texting sometimes is very slow, because you send the message
and you're not sure that the person is going to get it right away.
If you're using this kind of phone then you're either able to get
in touch with the person or not right away, and you can save a lot
of time."

Josiah Cheslik, a UW undergraduate and past participant in the
summer academy who is now a teaching assistant, agreed.

"Texting is for short things, like 'I'm here,' or, 'What do you
need at the grocery store?'" he said. "This is like making a real
phone call."

As everyone knows, text-based communication can also lead to
mix-ups.

"Sometimes with texting people will be confused about what it
really means," Song said. "With the MobileASL phone people can see
each other eye to eye, face to face, and really have better
understanding."

Some students also use video chat on a laptop, home computer or
video phone terminal, but none of these existing technologies for
transmitting sign language fits in your pocket.

Cheslik recounts that during the study one participant was lost
riding a Seattle city bus and the two were able to communicate
using MobileASL. The student on the bus described what he was
seeing and Cheslik helped him navigate where he wanted to go.

Newly released high-end phones, such as the iPhone 4 and the HTC
Evo, offer video conferencing. But users are already running into
hitches – broadband companies have blocked the
bandwidth-hogging video conferencing from their networks, and are
rolling out tiered pricing plans that would charge more to heavy
data users.

The UW team estimates that iPhone's FaceTime video conferencing
service uses nearly 10 times the bandwidth of MobileASL. Even after
the anticipated release of an iPhone app to transmit sign language,
people would need to own an iPhone 4 and be in an area with very
fast network speeds in order to use the service. The MobileASL
system could be integrated with the iPhone 4, the HTC Evo, or any
device that has a video camera on the same side as the screen.

"We want to deliver affordable, reliable ASL on as many devices
as possible," Riskin said. "It's a question of equal access to
mobile communication technology."

Jessica Tran, a doctoral student in electrical engineering who
is running the field study, is experimenting with different
compression systems to extend the life of the battery under heavy
video use. Electrical engineering doctoral student Jaehong Chon
made MobileASL compatible with H.264, an industry standard for
video compression. Tressa Johnson, a master's student in library
and information science and a certified ASL interpreter, is
studying the phones' impact on the deaf community.